I usually start these annual movie assessments with something like, “Well, it wasn’t a great year.”

Not this time: 2011 was loaded with terrific performances, directorial high points, breathtaking sights, astute and angsty reflections of our tenuous circumstances, genre goodies and just plain good times.

It has been years. I’ll concede that. You could hardly throw a bucket of popcorn at the multiplex without hitting an auteur reminding us why his or her name belongs above the title. The first five movies on my top 10 list, and three more, are by filmmakers with distinct reputations.

And to name just a few who didn’t make my chosen, er, 11, but surely did some of their finest work in 2011: Woody Allen (“Midnight in Paris”), Brad Bird (“Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol”), David Cronenberg (“A Dangerous Method”), Lee Chang-dong (“Poetry”), Terrence Malick (“The Tree of Life”), the late Raul Ruiz (“Mysteries of Lisbon”) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (“Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives”).

Then there’s the case of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” which even David Fincher’s formidable powers couldn’t transform into a sensible narrative.

To tell the truth, big Hollywood money projects like that almost entirely sucked this year. But then, they regularly do.

Yeah, that last Harry Potter movie got good reviews, but in the end it was just another thing about people pointing sticks at each other. And the Transformers entry was even more intolerable than the previous endurance tests.

They led a depressing parade of irritating, uninspired sequels, prequels and reboots (though “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” made a good effort).

Lastly, while I traditionally cite a multiple-movie performer of the year, settling on one for 2011 was a delightfully tough call.

So many choices: Rose Byrne in “Bridesmaids,” “Insidious” and “X-Men: First Class”; George Clooney in “The Descendants” and “The Ides of March”; Ryan Gosling in “Ides,” “Crazy, Stupid, Love” and “Drive”; Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Ides” and “Moneyball”; Brad Pitt in “Moneyball” and “The Tree of Life” and his co-star in the latter, Jessica Chastain, in that and a half- dozen others; Michelle Williams in “Meek’s Cutoff” and “My Week with Marilyn” … .

But there is a winner, and he’s a pretty obvious one, all things considered: Michael Fassbender. The versatile Irishman went way beyond the usual, sensitive brooding Rochester in the latest “Jane Eyre” adaptation, made “X-Men” villain Magneto the ultimate man who has his reasons (while giving wicked line deliveries), brought Carl Jung’s formidable intellect – and libido – to exciting life in “A Dangerous Method,” and let his body do most of the talking, to shattering effect, as “Shame’s” compulsive sex fiend.

It was an epic year for Fassbender. And, in ways that really count, for the movies.

1. MELANCHOLIA

“Another Earth,” “Martha Marcy May Marlene,” “Take Shelter” and “The Tree of Life” were all very fine movies. But it almost seemed like Lars von Trier rigorously reimagined those films’ best ideas and used them as building blocks for his grand, comprehensive statement about mankind’s place in this overwhelming but fragile world. Depression never looked so good, nor as innovatively conceived, as it does on Kirsten Dunst. And the final calamity was a sensory experience that, unlike most FX spectacles, shook viewers to their cores.

2. HUGO

Along came Martin Scorsese, of all people, with this awesomely smart ode to movie magic. There’s so much love here, for the mechanics, the inspiration, the professional commitment to and the evolution of the art form, both in how the piece was made and what it says. Inevitably, Scorsese does address the sadder, more dire issues faced by “Hugo’s” French orphans of all ages. That grounds the delirious celebration of cinema in what gives the movies meaning to us all: our sentimental response.

3. SHAME

Too graphic for some, too puritanical for others, in truth Steve McQueen’s study of a New York sex addict defies easy criticism by its passionate commitment to psychological realism. Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan could not have been more courageous, and Nicole Beharie is some kind of wonder in a handful of beguiling, devastating improvised scenes.

4. THE SKIN I LIVE IN

Or, “Pedro Almodovar’s Bride of Frankenstein,” with all of the formal and thematic implications that title would suggest. Some found this story of science, revenge and Spanish passion gone awry uninvolving. Really? And even if they did, how could they not have been thrilled by the way Almodovar rebuilt and repurposed every amazing thing he’s ever done for this new, crazy and, yes, compelling creature?

5. CERTIFIED COPY

In his first Western movie, Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami tells the absorbing tale of a couple (Juliette Binoche and William Shimell) dissecting their failed marriage. Or are they really strangers making it up as they travel along through Tuscany? Fascinating and, not to put too fine a point on it, universal.

6. THE NAMES OF LOVE

Seems like a sex farce about an often-naked, partisanally promiscuous activist hooking up with the straight-laced son of Holocaust survivors. OK, it is that, but on a more impressive level, Michel Leclerc’s ingenious comedy is a caustic critique of 70 years of French social history and the attitudes that went with it.

7. CORIOLANUS/HIGHER GROUND

The only thing that these first features have in common is that they starred their respective directors, Ralph Fiennes and Vera Farmiga. His might be the most canny and relevant Shakespeare update ever, anchored by Fiennes’ own, ferocious display of warrior hubris. Farmiga’s story of a woman slipping away from the Christian community she’s called home her whole adult life gives equal respect to intellectual curiosity and the need for faith. Although it generally looked kind of crummy, the last shot of Farmiga leaving her church is the most moving image of the year.

8. THE DESCENDANTS

Alexander Payne’s Hawaiian family dramedy isn’t the total success his “Sideways” was. There are enough superbly written and performed moments here, though, to convince us that people acting out their confusion is something American cinema could use a lot more of.

9. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN

Tilda Swinton has a demon child, but Scottish director Lynne Ramsay’s film boldly suggests that she wouldn’t have liked an angel any better. Swinton registers another expert act of behavioral insurgency, incalcuably aided by Seamus McGarvey’s intimate and unnerving camerawork.

10. CAVE OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS

Werner Herzog totes stereoscopic cameras into a recently discovered prehistoric cave, and against all technical odds brings some of mankind’s earliest discovered drawings to haunting new life. I could be wrong, but this sure looked like the first truly artistic use of digital 3-D that I’ve seen.

Bob Straus has been covering film at the L.A. Daily News since 1989. He wouldn't say the movies have gotten worse in that time, but they do keep getting harder to love. Fortunately, he still loves them.

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